Are the Ce pyrochlores quantum spin liquids - and how could we know for sure?

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• Owen Benton, Queen Mary University of London
• Thursday 11 December 2025, 14:00-15:30
• Seminar Room 3, RDC.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Gaurav.

Three-dimensional U(1) quantum spin liquids (QSLs) have long been sought as condensed-matter realizations of emergent quantum electrodynamics (QED). This emergent QED is rendered all the more intriguing by the presence of magnetic monopoles, strongly coupled to slow “photons”. Quantum spin ices – arising in pyrochlore magnets with dominant Ising interactions supplemented by transverse exchange – are among the most promising theoretical settings for this physics. Yet, in practice, many candidate materials have fallen short as structural disorder, off-stoichiometry, or competing ordered states have obscured or destroyed the U(1) QSL phase.

Over the last decade, the family of Ce pyrochlores Ce₂M₂O₇ (M = Zr, Sn, Hf) has emerged as perhaps the best current platform for realizing a U(1) QSL . The Kramers nature of the Ce³⁺ ion provides some protection against disorder, while its dipolar–octupolar ground-state doublet gives rise to an anisotropic XYZ Hamiltonian that theoretically stabilizes the U(1) QSL over a wide parameter range.

In this talk I will review recent progress in understanding these materials, with a view to evaluating the status of each one as a candidate U(1) QSL . While there are many commonalities between the Ce pyrochlores there are also subtle differences, which may suggest different interpretations for each material.

Finally, I will discuss how nonlinear spectroscopy could provide a powerful tool for directly identifying spinon dynamics in quantum spin ice systems, and outline how such measurements might be applied to the Ce pyrochlores.

This talk is part of the Theory of Condensed Matter series.

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